


Future

by amanda_jolene



Series: The Nelsons [3]
Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: F/M, Gen, Grown up Rinn, The Nelsons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 10:03:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1978728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amanda_jolene/pseuds/amanda_jolene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn and Rae grow old together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Future

**Author's Note:**

> Part of The Nelsons collection.

No one ever tells you that love isn’t easy. 

Finn starts to understand this when he’s 17 and falls in love, real love, for the first time. He’s thought he’s loved girls before but then Rae comes along and he realizes how wrong he is. 

It’s not all sunshine, though, not like in the movies. There are a few times he wants to give up. A few nights where they hurl hateful words at each other and walk away mad. Nights where she’s breaking under some invisible pressure that he can see and he’s left blindly swinging at whatever’s at her ear whispering lies and it all feels like the enormity of her problems are made for the spine of a strong man not the shoulders of a young lad. He’ll watch their relationship split wide open one night when in a fit of rage, he screams “I didn’t sign up for this!” At the moment, he’ll believe his words because all he wants is to hold her but she’s been so far removed from him that his fingertips can’t even reach her (It takes one long week for him to realize this is exactly what he signed up for and another month to convince her they’re worth a second chance). 

They work. They push and pull and mend their relationship time and time again. He spackles, she paints and together they understand that nothing worth having comes easy. 

The foundation feels like it’s cracking when they’re in their late twenties. Every negative test that rolls in sends her deeper into some dark place he can’t reach (but he feels along the walls blindly and calls out to her, regardless). A doctor dangles a diamond of hope in front of them, fertility drugs, but he snatches it away when he tells them the cost. They have a mortgage and a dog and no way to afford a prescription that costs half of their month’s salary. They try on their own for another year before he wakes up one morning to a letter telling him this is all her fault and he deserves children. It takes a week of gentle late night phone calls to get her home and he lies awake for the next two nights long after she’s cried herself to sleep. He finds a second job and they get the medicine (Finn is a family man long before he has a family). Two years later, he’s 30 and tired and on antidepressants. There’s still no baby and he quit believing in that a year ago but he loves Rae too much to tell her so. He’s worked 8 hours and is getting ready for another 8, half-asleep as he pulls his boots on when she sits on the bed and tells him to quit the job. She’s lost hope, too. They sit together in the dark for a long time, holding hands but they don’t cry. (He realizes the foundation isn’t broken just weather beaten. They fix it together, the way they always have and by spring, things are back in order just in time for a positive pregnancy test). 

It takes rearranging when there’s 3 (then 4) of them because it’s not just their relationship anymore, it’s their family. Some days, in the tide of kids, practices, jobs and dinner, it was hard to remember that spark that first ignited them. Their love was secure and sound now, they were an impenetrable fortress but one night she asks if he still finds her attractive. He spends his night awake, wondering why she would ever ask that, where had he dropped the ball? They were drowning in the ocean of their life because they weren’t Finn and Rae anymore, they were The Nelson’s and he had forgotten that he had a life preserver strapped to his back, big enough for two. (He buys the love caravan from his dad and ships the kids off for the weekend. His tongue spends hours tracing out just how beautiful she was to him). 

The same children they worked so hard to have almost tear them apart one time. Not children, child. The second boy and Finn spend a good portion of his teenage years chomping at each other’s throats with Rae in between them. He’s 15 and shoves Finn so hard that his head cracks the wall and it’s round 900 of their verbal boxing match with Rae as referee. It’s heated and the boy shouts, “It’s not like you’ve ever loved me anyway!” 

“If you were more like-“ he stops because it’s come out terribly wrong. He doesn’t want the boy to be like anyone else (he loves him, even with his head throbbing) but he can’t take back the words and the boy has tears in his eyes and Rae is fuming. They’re gone for a spell with the oldest relaying messages to Finn from Rae until Finn has enough and picks up his youngest son from school. Rae watches them pull into her mum’s drive and the boy wants to go home. She’ll never know what they talked about but boy and father never fight again (Finn tells him about fertility drugs, second jobs, and how the first time the second boy got sick, Finn stayed awake for 3 days because he was too afraid to put him down. The boy starts to realize he’s got a father who never misses a game and hugs him tight even when’s he’s wrong.)

They’ll be in their 50’s and a health scare will send them running into each other’s arms as doctors poke and prod and sample. It’s only a scare, though, but it’s enough. They agree that their time together is precious and they never fight again. 

Finn is 62 and his second son comes to him in tears. Marriage falling apart, she want a divorce… what do I do, Dad? Finn remembers spackle and paint, pushing and pulling and rearranging. 

“Let’s have a talk.”


End file.
